The hype surrounding J.J. McCarthy was palpable on Wednesday afternoon at TCO Performance Center.

It marked the first time since suffering a torn meniscus last summer that the 22-year-old quarterback was on full display for the Vikings in the flow of the offense.

All eyes were on him.

So imagine what McCarthy must have been feeling when the first pass he threw during 7-on-7 drills was intercepted. After dropping back to pass and going through his progression, McCarthy uncorked a pass to Justin Jefferson over the middle. The ball was tipped in the air and picked off by Ivan Pace Jr.

The response from McCarthy was what proved he’s ready to take over as the starting quarterback of the Vikings. Though he easily could’ve let that mistake derail him for the rest of the practice, he took it in stride and put together a very impressive performance.

“Everyone wants to be perfect,” McCarthy said. “Especially at the quarterback position.”

In that same breath, McCarthy provided a peek into his psyche, displaying a level of maturity that helps explain how he was able to bounce back so quickly in real time.

“The more you try to be perfect is going to kill you more than your imperfections will,” McCarthy said. “It’s OK to go out there and take risks.”

That’s exactly how Kevin O’Connell wants the Vikings to approach organized team activities. He refers to it as the “learning phase” for a reason. He wants his players to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

What are some of the ways McCarthy has gone about doing that?

“Just anticipatory throws and trying to fit it into a tight spot,” McCarthy said. “Not being afraid to fail out here.”

That mindset has actually put McCarthy in a position to succeed. He attacked the recovery process with a sense of fearlessness as he worked his way back from a torn meniscus. That has allowed him to pick up right where he left off now that he’s back on the field with his teammates.

“There’s been a lot of lonely hours where it’s him and the training staff and the strength staff,” O’Connell said. “He looks great, and he’s feeling really good.”

The next step for McCarthy is continuing to progress. As much work as he was able to learn from afar last season, he still has a lot more to learn as he steps into the spotlight as the man under center this season.

“We can’t assume that he knows any particular thing just based upon the meeting room,” O’Connell said. “We’ve got to come out here and organically feel where he’s at.”

A big part of that has been seeing how McCarthy looks in 7-on-7 drills when he’s dropping back to pass and going through his progression.

“You can really get a feel for, ‘Is a guy reading with his feet? Is he taking the right drop? Is his base and body and balance positioned to the throws and sequence of the drop in the proper place?’” O’Connell said. “You can kind of coach backwards from the ending of the play.”

Sometimes that means getting together after an interception and discussing with him what needs to be better. Sometimes that means getting together after a completion and praising him for a job well done.

“Never satisfied on any particular outcome,” O’Connell said. “We’re building towards something much greater than just a single play here or there.”

As for McCarthy, he made it clear that he’s going to continue to carry himself with confidence, regardless of if he throws an interception or a touchdown pass.

“Not letting that carry over,” McCarthy said. “You learn from it, emotionally detach from that outcome, and keep just moving.”

Minnesota Vikings head coach talks with quarterbacks J.J. McCarthy (9) Max Brosmer (12), Brett Rypien (11) and Sam Howell (8) during an NFL football team practice Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

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The Trump administration has canceled $766 million awarded to drugmaker Moderna Inc. to develop a vaccine against potential pandemic influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu.

The company said it was notified Wednesday that the Health and Human Services Department had withdrawn funds awarded in July 2024 and in January to pay for development and purchase of its investigational vaccine.

The funds were awarded through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a program that focuses on medical treatments for potential pandemics.

The new vaccine, called mRNA-1018, used the same technology that allowed development and rollout of vaccines to fight Covid-19 in record time.

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed deep skepticism regarding the safety of mRNA vaccines.

The cancelation came as Moderna announced positive interim results from an early-stage trial of the vaccine that targeted H5 bird flu virus, tested in 300 healthy adults.

“While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis,” the company said in a statement.

H5N1 bird flu viruses spilled from wild bird into cattle in the U.S. last year, infecting hundreds in several states. At least 70 people in the U.S. have been sickened by bird flu infections, mostly mild. One person died. Scientists fear that continued mutation of the virus could allow it to become more virulent or more easily spread in people, with the possibility that it could trigger a pandemic.

Moderna received $176 million in July 2024 and $590 million in January. The January award would have supported a late-stage clinical trial that could have determined the vaccine’s efficacy against pandemic viruses, including bird flu, a company spokesman said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Remembering journalist and former City Limits editor Tom Robbins, who died this week after decades spent sharing the stories of New Yorkers who, as he put it, “were at work in the trenches…trying to do what government had refused to do” for their neighborhoods.

Tom Robbins and Annette Fuentes, City Limits’ editing team in the early 1980s, in the magazine’s offices. (Photo by Brian Patrick O’Donohue/City Limits’ Archives)

Tom Robbins first joined City Limits as an associate editor in 1980, having previously worked as a housing organizer on the Lower East Side, at a time when “landlords would step out the door and torch their buildings,” he recalled decades later.

That early community activism was a fitting gateway into a long and storied career in investigative and accountability journalism, including five years as an editor with City Limits and later roles with the New York Daily News, The Village Voice, and THE CITY. He most recently served as the Investigative Reporter in Residence at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, a position he held for years until his death this week at the age of 76.

“What makes reporting the greatest job in the world is that you get to talk to people and hear their stories,” Robbins said in a 2018 speech at City Limits’ 42nd anniversary gala, where he was honored with the newsroom’s Urban Journalist Award. “And there were no better stories to be recorded than those told by the folks who were at work in the trenches back then trying to do what government had refused to do—to stop abandonment, to rescue buildings from lousy landlords, to push banks and politicians to reinvest, to create new affordable homes.”

Tom Robbins, right, with former City Limits editor Jarrett Murphy
in 2018. (Photo by Larry Racioppo)

Robbins recorded countless such stories during his decades covering the city. He marched alongside housing organizers in spring of 1985 as they picketed on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower, “battling programs that granted fat tax breaks to luxury development while shortchanging affordable housing.” He chronicled the long fight over Seward Park, five-acres of land along Manhattan’s Delancey Street that sat vacant for years after the city evicted thousands of residents, and razed their homes, in an act of “urban renewal.” He attended the housing court hearing of a single mother and her son in Queens facing eviction from their apartment, where the landlord had removed the doors in an attempt to get them out.

“Writing for City Limits allowed me to be a witness to the battles everyday New Yorkers were waging in neighborhoods throughout the city,” Robbins said in that earlier gala speech.

He continued:

“Being there changes you. It informs how you see the world. Icicles on a radiator in an East Flatbush apartment where kids are huddled under blankets. (I remember this one clearly because my pal Marc Jahr took a photo of it). Slick rat holes in a tenement on Norfolk Street where the landlord is trying to evict everyone. Roofs caved in by fires purposely set to empty a huge complex in Boro Park. A millionaire politician preening at the old Board of Estimate that low income housing only breeds crime. I’ve been out of City Limits for more than 30 years but those images stay with me, and shape how I see the world I write about.”

“But the bigger story from that time—and this is another takeaway—remains to be told: How New York City was really saved from what’s now considered the bad old days. Somehow the prevailing wisdom among those who claim to know what turned New York around in that era is that it was largely the work of a few farsighted politicians and financial leaders. That ultimately it took a mayor who promised to crack down wherever there were broken windows. That kind of talk always makes me grind my teeth. Because those of us who watched it happen know that neighborhood groups were the only ones fixing broken windows decades before that mayor took office. And they had to do it largely on their own.”

You can read Robbins’ full remarks from that 2018 event here.

Beyond his own reporting, Robbins taught and mentored many emerging journalists in the craft of covering New Yorkers’ stories, and always with an eye toward exposing injustice. City Limits was lucky to collaborate on and publish some of that work, including student-led investigations into a web of deteriorating properties owned by a notorious Bronx landlord, and another into how errors on court and law enforcement records threatened the livelihoods of millions across New York State.

–Jeanmarie Evelly, editor, City Limits

When I first came to New York in 1986 to help launch a not-for-profit dedicated to media criticism, I was fortunate enough to encounter Tom Robbins for the first time. Tom was 11 years older than me, and he had already accomplished much by then—first by being City Limits’ formative editor, and having made waves early in what would be a decades-long tenure of path breaking reportage at the Village Voice and Daily News.

When I met him, Tom already felt part of a larger than life historic cohort of New York journalists. He, and the cadre of civically engaged reporters and columnists then working at the Village Voice (and elsewhere), had a definitively New York sensibility. This was not only as a result of their beats, but in the brave, stubborn way they went about covering stories and uncovering graft, vanity and hubris.  No fear or favor. Corrupt political dealings, unions failing on their promise, the perversion of justice or the pernicious influence of organized crime in city life—all were targets for Tom.

He was an avatar of a tradition that stretched back to Jacob Riss and Nellie Bly and went through Breslin, Kempton, Hamill, Newfield and his comrade in arms, Wayne Barrett. Tom worked not only at breaking stories but seeking in his own way to investigate, interrogate and define the promise and peril of New York City. 

Tom Robbins, pictured at the podium, introducing former Village Voice colleague Wayne Barrett at City Limits’ gala in 2016. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

At the very first, he seemed a little larger than life to me, but swiftly we became friendly, sometimes combatively so when I moved on to become a press secretary in local government. When I later became the steward of City Limits for a time in the early 2000s, Tom was a source of reassurance, wisdom, guidance and realism—not to mention support and generosity. His time as City Limits editor set a template for its work of serious, policy-focused journalism. A journalism that seeks to uplift the afflicted and hold the powerful accountable. The true north he set is still etched on City Limits’ compass. 

Tom carried a wry, sometimes slightly world-weary air that was leavened by a gentle sardonic humor, a proverbial twinkle in his eye, a reservoir of deep kindness and a seriousness of moral purpose in his work. He was a good man. He was the best of New York. He will be missed.

—Andy Breslau, board member, City Limits

Share your memories of Tom Robbins: editor@citylimits.org

The post Remembering Tom Robbins, Who Bore Witness to New Yorkers’ Everyday Battles appeared first on City Limits.

Another person faces charges in the sprawling $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case after she allegedly tried to flee the U.S. following a raid at a St. Paul office federal authorities say is tied to the scheme.

Hibo Daar, 50, of Eden Prairie, is the 71st person to face charges in the case after her arrest Sunday by federal authorities at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. She remained in custody Wednesday night ahead of a Friday hearing before a federal judge in Minneapolis.

Daar had bought tickets to Dubai the same day media reports publicized an FBI raid at an office suspected of connections to Feeding Our Future, prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint unsealed this week in Minnesota U.S. District Court.

Search of St. Paul nonprofit

The FBI served a search warrant at the offices of the New Vision Foundation at 860 Vandalia St. in St. Paul last week, a nonprofit with ties to Feeding Our Future, Minnesota Public Radio reported. The court documents do not directly tie Daar to the foundation.

Daar was a target in the overall Feeding Our Future investigation, according to the federal complaint. Law enforcement first contacted her about the investigation in April 2025 in connection with a federal grand jury investigation.

Federal prosecutors say the now-defunct Feeding Our Future nonprofit collected payments for millions of meals that partner groups never served during the pandemic. The organization has been shut down since the FBI raided its offices in January 2022. Prosecutors described it as the largest instance of federal pandemic aid fraud.

Daar’s meal site, Northside Wellness, collected about $1.8 million from Feeding Our Future, but only spent about $2,000 on food, prosecutors allege. It started operating in November 2020. By January 2021, forms filed by the group claimed it fed more than 50,000 children.

The numbers continued to grow. At one point, Northside claimed to be feeding 40,000 meals to children per week. In April 2021, it reported serving 5,600 meals a day. Daar signed off on the forms and emailed claims to convicted Feeding Our Future ringleader Aimee Bock, according to the complaint.

Rather than serve meals, Northside made payments to Daar and others, according to the complaint. Daar received about $110,000 from the group, federal authorities allege.

Target of investigation

When authorities started communicating with Daar this spring, they told her she likely was a target in the investigation and could face criminal charges, according to the complaint.

When news broke of the search at New Vision Foundation, she bought a ticket to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates which was scheduled to depart on May 25 and return on June 2.

FBI Special Agent Travis Wilmer wrote in the complaint that, based on his experience, people buying round-trip tickets will sometimes do so to hide the fact that they do not intend to return.

Daar faces a wire fraud charge and remains in federal custody at the Sherburne County Jail ahead of a detention hearing Friday. Her attorney couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz ordered she remain in custody at her initial appearance on Tuesday.

Besides Daar, federal authorities have charged 70 people in the case since September 2022. As of March, 37 had pleaded guilty; seven, including Bock, were convicted at trial; and two have been acquitted.

A 2024 review by the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor found “inadequate oversight” at the Minnesota Department of Education created an opportunity for massive fraud to take place.

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